Wal-Mart or Costco: Australia’s 21st Century Choice?

By Miles Goodwin & Glenda Maconachie

This paper contrasts the experience of two American companies in the same industry with diametrically opposed approaches to work, employee relations and business --Wal-Mart and Costco.

These organisations provide examples of the 'high road' (Costco) and the 'low road' (Wal-Mart) to wages, benefits, working conditions, participation and unionisation for American workers in the retail industry.

Using an institutional theory of organisations, isomorphism (DiMaggio & Powell 1983), the paper explores pressures on organisations to conform to what is acceptable behaviour, structure or practice in their field or industry. This exploration centres on the choice to be made by Australian business of whether to adopt the Wal-Mart or the Costco way and whether this choice is for employers alone to make. It is argued that one mechanism of isomorphic organisational change, coercive isomorphism, is likely to be most influential in the 'road' chosen by Australian business.

In: 21st Century Work: High Road or Low Road: Proceedings of the 20th Conference of the Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand (AIRAANZ) vol. 1